The technology relates to a vehicle control device and a vehicle including the vehicle control device, e.g., an automobile.
Various proposals have been put forward for display devices in vehicles such as automobiles. The display devices may recognize environment forward of an own vehicle with various kinds of environment recognition units, and provide image display of information on, for example but not limited to, a lane shape and an obstacle.
Moreover, advancement of a function of automatic operation and a function of driving assistance has brought practical use of techniques that allow a vehicle to recognize surrounding situation and to set a future traveling line of the own vehicle.
Regarding such automatic setting of the traveling line by the vehicle, proposals have been made to use the display devices as mentioned above, in order to assist a user in supervising validity of setting of a target traveling line. The term “user” refers to, for example but not limited to, an occupant such as a driver in manual operation.
The following is some examples of existing techniques regarding the display device for the vehicle. Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. 2006-171950 describes that an estimated course of an own vehicle and a recommended course to avoid an obstacle are displayed on a front windshield, with a head up display.
JP-A No. 2007-272350 describes that a target travelable region of an own vehicle is displayed with a head up display, and that a position of the target travelable region is moved in accordance with a change in a vehicle speed.
The following is an example of existing techniques regarding the setting of the traveling line in an automatic operation control. JP-A No. 2005-099930 describes a traveling control system that is intended for improvement in precision of the target traveling line. The traveling control system receives traveling information from a plurality of vehicles through an information center, and performs a steering control on the basis of recommended traveling information on the center side. The recommended traveling information is generated on the basis of a plurality of pieces of traveling information received.